Friends
by anakinlove
Summary: Batman goes back  to a place he left to right some past wrongs


I was lonely that night. Before, loneliness wasn't something I understood other people having. I'm used to being alone. My existence is lonely in and of itself, but that night was different. Alfred was on vaccacion, God knows he needed one, and Dick was off as Nightwing in Bludhaven.

Tim was with the titans and well, that just about covered the people I normally talked to, not that any of them were particularly pleased with me on that evening. They often were mad at me these days and I had often been feeling lonely. I hated feeling lonely. It wasn't right somehow. I was a creature of the night, and when I had been young, I was content being just that. Now, however, I was getting older. I was feeling jaded. I was thinking about the past.

I stood on top of the roof, gazing out over the city. My city. It was better then it had been when I had first started this God forsaken crusade, but it was still far from good, still far from perfect. I drew my arms around myself, more in instinct at the force of the wind then any actual feelings of cold. My suit protected me from any and every element, but that night, I almost wished I could feel the wind, just to convince myself that I could still feel something.

I was taking a good long look at my life, the way things had come out. I hadn't seemed to make any lasting relationships in the life I was living. Would anyone even remember the Batman as a person and not a figure head after I was gone? I was supposed to be a eternal demon of sorts, an everlasting blight on crime, but that was simply what I was. Would anyone really remember who I was?

I leaned against one of the gargoyles on the top of the building I was on, breathing deeply. I did my best to force the emotion back inside, from the depths out of which it came. I succeeded, but only for the time being. I couldn't be thinking like this, like there was no one out there on this earth that cared what Bruce Wayne did any more. I had decided long ago that the persona of the Bat would consume me and I was to be nothing more then that. Why was I having second thoughts, why were these dark feelings creeping in on me?

The loneliness persisted, refusing to be ousted. I didn't know what to do. Making a split second decision, I called the batwing to come pick me up. I was in no state to take down criminals that night. I was more in need of a good long chat with myself and who I thought I was. It flew over to the side of the building and I hopped in. Gotham would be fine for one night, her protector needed some time away from her, to forget.

I drove in silence, the heaviness of it weighing down on me. My thoughts spiraled gradually downward until I had to cut them off to stop from further depressing myself. They were going to someplace I didn't want them to, a raw spot I refused to let them touch.

I was ashamed of myself. Here I was, fretting over my own identity like a teenager. I was done with puberty, had been for a long time. It was more of trying to find something I felt I had lost then anything else. If I didn't know who I was, how would anyone else remember me? I wasn't getting any younger, but I hadn't shown anyone enough of myself to be remembered as anything more then my many facades, my many masks.

Unconsciously, my hands guided the Batwing back to one of the league outposts. I didn't really want to go to one, too many memories, but I did. It was as if my subconscious had decided it was going to try and right some past wrongs that night. I knew he would be there, even before I touched down. Something inside me told me he would be there. I wanted to go to him because he had tried, harder then anyone else in fact, to see me as a person. I had pushed him off so many times. Now though, things had changed and life was not as simple, not as black and white.

My existence had been complicated since the untimely death of my parents. Now, however, it was even more so. Recent events had shoved me out of my comfortable state and made me remember that death was as much a reality as life. I had forgotten, but it seemed as if fate was never going to let me forget again. It's one thing to lose parents. It's another to lose a child.

I walked inside, coming in from the cool night air, and moved down the halls. It surprised me how much coming here reminded me of when I was young, going to see a parent in the middle of the night for comfort after an unsettling dream. I shook those thoughts out of my mind. I was here on business, I told myself, no reason other then that. It wasn't true, but it didn't matter.

0000000

He looked up as I walked in. I knew he had heard me when I had landed, but looking up was a courtesy he paid me, as if he didn't have super hearing, as if his senses weren't stronger then mine. For me, he acted like a normal human being. I appreciated it, not that I told him.

"Bruce", he said softly. It was an acknowledgement of my presence, a greeting, but I could hear a question in it as well. For all his super senses, he could not fathom why I had come here of all places. That gave me some small pleasure.

I was still acting like a child, still trying to best him, though countless men had told me I never could. When one is told one can't do something too many times, one starts to believe it. It was force of habit, all just old timers caught in inescapable regimes until our death days. I felt so old right then, for the second time that night it was as if my very existence was slipping away before my eyes.

"Clark", I replied, nodding my head towards him. He turned away from me in silence, but it was a hopeful one. He didn't want to have to ask me why I was here, he wanted me to just come out and say it. But he had known me for so many years now, he should have known I never would.

I sat down at a computer table and gazed at the information on the screen. "Not that you're not welcome", he said finally, breaking the silence, "but why are you here?" There it was, the question. Now, the game continued. I would have to think of an answer. It was all just games, mindless, endless games.

"I wanted to check the computers here", I replied, "thought maybe I could get some information from them." It was a viable excuse and it would have worked several years ago. Now however, it held no grounds.

"You updated your own software long ago and these days, I hear its much better then this stuff. Is there a power outage at the batcave?" I could hear the edge in his voice. He still hadn't fathomed why I had shown up here. It almost made me giggle. Keeping things from him still pleased me. at least I hadn't lost that much of my humanity in those long years.

"Sometimes", I said, "the old equipment tells me things the new stuff can't. There's no problem with the software I installed here, or the machines." There, a fact he couldn't dispute. He knew that wasn't the reason I had come, but he couldn't argue that the excuse I had given was a good reason to come, even if it was not mine. With an alibi, even a false one, I was always safe.

Or, I had been before. Now, however, it seemed that was not to be the case. He had changed since we'd last spoken. Not by much, but he'd changed. Or, maybe I had. I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him. His blue eyes shown softly at me. "I'm sorry about Jason", he said.

I immediately turned my eyes back to the screen in front of me. It had been a few years since Jason died, but we still hadn't talked about it. It had been a few years since we had talked about much of anything. The pain was still there though, and I hoped he would get the message that I didn't want to talk about the boy.

I shrugged and kept working. He sat next to me, gazing at me with those piercing blue eyes while I attempted to keep myself busy. I wanted to tell him to go away and mind his own business, but I couldn't. There had been a time when I could have, but so many things had changed. "Conner and Tim, they get along well", he said. I nodded.

"Conner's a good kid", I grunted, happy to change the subject.

"Tim is too", he continued. "They'll be close; it's good for them to have each other." It was a subtle hint, and dropped so coyly too. I didn't remember him being this tactful in the past. He wanted me to pick up that string and make a comment, but I chose not to.

He waited and waited, but after seeing I wasn't going to accommodate him, spoke again. "We used to be friends", he said, "what happened?"

"We were younger then", I rasped.

"Tell me why you came here", Clark said, "Tell me the truth, because it wasn't those damn computers, I'd bet my life on it." I forced back a smile. There'd be lots of people who would take him up on that bet, just to take pot shots at him. I had forgotten before, but his fan club was dwindling almost as much as mine these days. In the emerging world we lived in, there wasn't a lot of room for superheroes.

He wanted to be friends again. I looked up at him, his eyes shinning so hopefully. He was still so innocent, still so untouched by the world, which had long ago corrupted me. He needed me to be his friend because we were one in the same. We had a similar purpose, a similar goal, and similar obstacles. I couldn't bear to let him down. There was a time when I would have, but I didn't now.

"I guess, maybe…I was lonely", I admitted softly, hating the words even as they came out, but needing so badly to get them off my chest to someone that continued "the boys all left the house now. I'm alone there, especially with Alfred gone." He nodded sympathetically at me and said,

"How you live through that self inflicted solitude is beyond me Bruce. You know, everyone says my powers go beyond that of any mortal man, but you're much stronger then me Bruce, much stronger indeed. After all you've gone through…" I was shocked that he had said this, so much so I dropped the pen I'd had in my hand.

I tried to cover it up artfully by stooping down to get it, but his hand touched mine at exactly the same time. I brought my eyes up to look at him and he looked at me. I could see it shinning in his eyes, pleasure that he'd shocked me enough to get me to do something like drop a pen. He was probably the only man on earth who could do that. "Cheeky", I grumbled softly, lower then could be understood by any normal person, but still perceived by him, and picked up my pen, tucking it into my pocket.

But, for all he was and all the compassion he felt for me, he was alone in the world too. It was a different kind of aloneness, a more alien one, but one entwined with mine so completely, one could not tell when one started and another ended. He didn't have to worry about leaving a mark though, being remembered. There would only be one Superman ever, but there would always be a Batman, weather it was me or not.

"We should have lunch sometime", he said, "talk things over. A lot's been happening lately and I've been wanting your take on it. Seems everywhere I turn, a war's starting or a plague's occurring or some other disaster is worming its way through this planet." I nodded. Despite isolating myself in Gotham, I still paid attention to world events, even if I didn't take part in them anymore.

"There was a time when this league was great", he continued, "do you remember?" I nodded. The glory days we had called them, when we were young, idealistic, ready to leap up and help someone no matter who they were.

That was back when we rescued cats from trees and helped little old ladies cross streets and weren't bound by the rules of whatever country the watchtower hovered over. That was before the complex politics and the problems with Cadmus. I found myself suddenly yearning for those days, when the league had been something like a family and not just a bunch of heroes.

I had been great then. I hated to admit it, but I had liked being great. Now, only Gotham's underworld saw what I did. I didn't save the world, just the small people, often times drunks or people who deserved what was coming to them in the first place. I got no thank you's. I had no legacy.

Superman looked at me again, making eye contact with those startling eyes of his. He held it for a moment and then reached out and hugged me tightly. I should have threatened to pull out of the Kryptonite on him, but I didn't. I understood how he felt. He missed the old days too. Things made sense back then. They didn't now.

"I'll pay for lunch if you let go of me", I said finally. He released me and grinned.

"I missed you, you know. I missed back when we were all those colorful heroes up in that watchtower and grumpy Batman would come in and do his best to put a rain cloud over all our heads. What happened to the guy that used to threaten me with kryptonite every twenty seconds?"

I grinned at him that time, a real grin. It was my old grin, the one I used when I popped my once a year joke. It felt good to be talking to him again. As much as I hated to admit it, I had missed his friendship. Trying to spread my own foul naturedness, I missed doing that too. "Now, would you quit staring at that computer", he said to me, "I know you're not really interested in what it has to say."

"Ohh", I said innocently, "and how do you know that."

"Well, maybe because it stopped working two years ago." I grinned at him again.

"I suppose I should fix it for you then, because we both know I'm the only one that can."

"That would be nice", he said, "but first, how's about we go visit the Titans. I haven't tortured Super boy in a bit and from what he's told me, Robin hasn't complained about you in over a week."

"Well", I growled, "He really should be working harder. I heard he messed up his triple back flip at a crucial moment. I've been meaning to talk to him about that.

We walked out of the base, his arm around my shoulder, talking casually, like we had so many years before. We complained about dictators and super villains and younger heroes, knowing all the while we had been exactly that way when we were their age. It was nice to be friends again. Perhaps I couldn't make my own legacy, but Superman seemed intent on making sure I had one.


End file.
